Kevin Page Confirms A New Mistake Found in NDP Platform

$1.4 Billion Mistake Per Year; $7 Billion in Total

Saturday, May 19, 2018

(Toronto) The NDP platform contains another major error. This time, it is just basic arithmetic. Instead of adding the $700 million reserve to their deficit they subtracted it, creating a $1.4 billion-dollar hole in each year of their plan.

The $700 million is for the Reserve – a large fiscal stabilization fund that protects “against unforeseen adverse changes in the Province’s revenue and expense forecasts.” (Ontario Budget 2018)

Kevin Page - who the NDP hired to validate their numbers - confirmed the error:

“It is a mistake […] Looks like a spreadsheet type of error. If they wanted to eliminate the reserve, they should have left it at zero — not subtract $700 million per year.” (Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 2018)

To put it in perspective, this $1.4 billion mistake is the equivalent of the combined operating budgets of Sick Kids and Mount Sinai hospitals every year.

And they misallocated this much money with a basic arithmetic error.

This gaffe calls into question Andrea Horwath and the NDP’s readiness to govern, manage the economy and makes their plan increasingly unrealistic.